The exterior surfaces and walls of buildings can be covered and protected from the environment by cladding in the form of panels, tiles, shingles and the like. As used herein, the terms “tile” and “tiles” are intended to include both natural and artificial sheets or slabs of material suitable for use as a cladding or covering over any exterior surface of a building, and particularly over building walls.
In the examples described below, naturally occurring materials such as slate and stone materials are used as representative cladding tiles. However, the cladding installation and mounting assembly described below can be used with any type of tiles to facilitate and expedite the installation of cladding tiles on a building.
A quickly and conveniently installed tile installation system has been developed for mounting cladding tiles to a building without the need for costly skilled labor. That is, prior cladding installation methods required nailing all tiles directly to a building wall. This required a skilled installer to use just the right amount of driving force to drive a nail through a punched or drilled hole in a tile. Too much force resulted in damaged or broken tiles and too little force resulted in loose tiles which could blow away under high winds.
The cladding installation system described below can be installed without the need for nailing tiles to a wall and without the need for punching or drilling nail holes through the cladding tiles. Instead of relying on the use of nails, the cladding system disclosed below uses a series of vertically-spaced, horizontally-elongated mounting strips each preassembled with a series of horizontally spaced tile fasteners.
The tile fasteners are pivotally mounted to the mounting strips so they can be manually rotated into a compact storage or shipping position and manually rotated from the shipping or storage position into an installed position. This can be achieved by a simple twisting or turning movement over an angle of, for example, ninety degrees or less.
The mounting strips can be formed of extruded metal or plastic. However, plastic materials are well suited for this application due to their light weight, low cost and low thermal expansion.
In addition to the tile fasteners, a series of weather barriers or rain guards is pivotally mounted to the mounting strips at spaced intervals. The rain guards can be formed of any thin sheet of weather resistant or waterproof material such as high density polyethylene (HDPE) or roofing underlayment material such as that commonly referred to as “tar paper”. The rain guards can be pivoted into a storage or shipping position along with the tile fasteners, and quickly and easily rotated or turned to an installed position with a simple manual twist or turn.
An advantage of the cladding installation system described below is its ability to be installed in separate stages by different installers. While the cladding installation system can be installed by a single installer, the option to separate the installation steps allows for the preassembly of the mounting strips to a building by one installer and the final installation of cladding tiles by a second installer. This not only provides flexibility in the installation process but also can speed up the installation process by using two or more installers working in tandem.
Because the tile fasteners are preassembled on the mounting strips in an indoor manufacturing facility, an installer is not required to mount individual tile fasteners to a building or to a mounting strip or batten. This not only simplifies installation and saves installation time, it also eliminates the bother and aggregation of separating tangled fasteners.
That is, prior fasteners have been carried by installers in a pouch in which the fasteners become tangled and must be untangled by an installer prior to use. Moreover, because the tile fasteners are assembled in a controlled indoor facility, the accuracy of the spacings between the tile fasteners and rain guards is better than that achieved by installers at an outdoor construction site.
The accurate and substantially equal spacings between the tile fasteners results in a symmetrical pattern of installed cladding tiles giving a building an eye pleasing architectural character. The resulting symmetry of the tiles is both artistically and aesthetically pleasing and avoids the unsightly appearance of irregular joints common in other cladding and siding systems.
The cladding installation system disclosed below is more cost effective than other types of building exterior coverings, including artificial planking and stucco. Because slate and stone cladding experiences minimal color fading over time, it maintains its original appearance and color better than artificially colored or dyed plastic planking and plastic siding. Slate and stone cladding also is less susceptible to thermal expansion and contraction than artificial planking and results in a more dimensionally stable and secure cladding.
The lightweight, self-contained preassembled cladding system eliminates the need for measuring and installing tile fasteners on a building, and provides a simple, easy to use, accurate and robust mounting for building cladding tiles
As building cladding is typically installed from the bottom of a wall to the top of a wall, prior cladding systems required an installer to manually hold a tile in place over a lower tile while trying to drive a nail into the upper tile. This is cumbersome and time consuming.
In contrast, when using the tile installation system described below, an installer needs only to pivot or rotate a preinstalled fastener about ninety degrees or less to engage and hold the upper edge of a tile in an installed position. No nailing, clipping or other fastening is required to initially hold a tile in place during its installation. This greatly facilitates and expedites the installation of tiles on a building. Moreover, the tile installation system described below can be installed starting from either the top or bottom of a wall thereby offering greater flexibility and choice in the installation process.
In the various views of the drawings, like reference numbers represent like of similar parts.